Joe’s sitting at a green table under a sign that says ‘Spanish 21’. He’s smoking a cigarette, drinking a cocktail. His hair is slicked back and he’s wearing a very stylish shirt. Jason and I stand behind him and watch him play four hands against the dealer.

Brett approaches, seats himself, and places a chip in the little circle on the felt.

Joe’s hand ends, and he says to Don, “I don’t mind if you take a moment to give him,” and he tilts his head the tiniest amount to his right, “the spiel on how to play.”

People sitting at tables in casinos begin to comunicate in tiny little movements. Sometimes all that moves of them are their hands. They utterly cease to point. Dealers don’t need anything more than a token movement; Don turns to Brett. “Have you ever played this game before?” Brett shakes his head.

Joe organizes his chips, sips his drink. He moves his ashtray a few millimeters.

The dealer says, “Well, there are no tens.”

And Jason – quiet, reticent Jason – explodes. Into a single syllable he could not have held back if he’d wanted to:

“Ah!” he says.

In it was such relief, such understanding. I think I actually heard tumblers snick into place in his head! “Ah!” he says, but what he means is “I see! The missing detail! The game becomes clear!”

It was hysterical. Perhaps you had to be there. It was the funniest “Ah!” ever uttered, in the history of “Ah!”s. I think I laughed for five minutes.

“Ah!” I quoted, giggling, pleased with being witness to that moment, that ineffable sensation of suddenly getting it, of collecting a satisfying little piece of information from the world.

I adore that feeling.

“That was so funny!” I told him.

“One takes these small victories,” he said, grinning sideways at me, but but actually watching the table with that easy concentration of his, “whenever they come.”

An autumnal toast to us all: may it always be so fun to learn something new!

—
I plucked my eyebrowns yesterday and they look great.

I don’t understand how something so… weird… can make a girl feel so much better-looking. It’s miraculous. Nicely groomed eyebrows do more for my self-esteem than any amount of bathing, shaving, dressing, and make-up ever can. I think it’s because my eyebrows want to be rather pointed in the middle, but that that quality gets lost when they’re all bushy.

It’s hard to say what eyebrows want, really. Perhaps all they really want is to join together the hair on both temples, right across the brow, in one full strip of eye-shading hair.

—
The plucking was in preparation for our Saturday night trip to a casino boat in Burlington. It had been decided, at Regina’s on Brett’s birthday during dinner, that some gambling was in order.

After One Stop closed Saturday afternoon we – Brett and Joe and me and Bo and Jason – were to congregate and head for Burlington. (Bo went off to have a talk with his ex-girlfriend and missed us, and the rest of us went without him.)

We had fun.

I like casinos because they’re like Christmas trees, all bright and lit up and fun to look at.

I played ten bucks in the slots and doubled it. Brett played various styles of poker and lost his fun money. Joe played roulette and actually made fifty bucks or so. I think Jason engaged in a little video poker and lots of observing.

Joe and I would have stayed longer, if it had been left up to us, but we like to be up late in smoke-filled establishments where cocktails are available, where there’s a behavioral code to be learned and mastered, where there are short Mexican men playing hundreds of dollars per spin at the roulette wheel. Ideally in towns where there might be a Denny’s or Shari’s or Country Kitchen open at three o’clock in the morning for deep fat fried breakfasts and tinny-tasting coffee.

We got home around two.
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